Mailbag: Give artists some leeway on parking

August 04, 2011

It is nice living here in a small town where folks watch out after one another. It sometimes seems to me like it is us against the world, and in a community of artists these times can be tight even without floods.

The Sawdust Art Festival is made up of traditionally local artists, some of whom suffered damage during the devastating floods. But when the tourists leave, Lagunans always come together.

I was astonished to observe recently what appeared to be the parasitic attack on these same artists. This community breath of "togetherness" seems to have been soured by one person in town.

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The Sawdust sits on a frontage road that usually doesn't fill up with tourists until about 10 a.m. Before then, it is usually the scene of 10 to 15 parked cars and SUVs, with artists unloading art & crafts and supplies into their booths, before moving these cars to their day-parking areas. Otherwise, the road is usually empty all the way to Woodland.

When I asked a meter maid why she was ticketing these cars whose drivers were obviously loading and unloading into Sawdust at about 9:10 a.m. on a Monday, she said that she was told to do so.

There should be, in my humble opinion, a courtesy waiver of meter police until 9:45 a.m.

NASA, not Obama, planned to replace the shuttle with the Orion spacecraft, but budget cuts have placed full development of the Orion craft in doubt.

A little background: The shuttle program commenced on April 12, 1981, with Columbia, the first shuttle orbital flight. The space shuttle program finished July 21 with Atlantis' last mission. Each vehicle was designed with a projected life span of 100 launches, or 10 years of operational life.

Orion was originally planned as our new manned mission to the moon and potentially Mars. Last month, Obama modified his proposal, calling for continuing the development of the Orion crew capsule but only as a stripped-down lifeboat for the International Space Station.

Delays and rising costs are the primary reasons the Obama administration cites for its desire to kill the moon mission and turn over to private companies the business of launching astronauts.